Stop Problems In Their Tracks

First and foremost: get early alerts. Small issues experienced by some users can hint at big problems that could shortly arise. The earlier you detect issues, the faster you can fix them to minimize the impact they will have on end-users. Here is a checklist of items to keep your eye on:

• Check user connectivity with Microsoft. For example, bad DNS configuration is a very common single point of failure. Keep in mind that the more hops you have between the user and the Microsoft cloud, the more likely you are to have network latency along the path. You should also make sure that the user is connected to the nearest Microsoft front door. We have seen many customers with suboptimal front door configuration which decreases the overall performance of the service.
• Check the performance of every hop to detect a potential bottleneck. That can be done with a command like ‘My Traceroute’ when available. With that information you can identify who owns the issue (your company or third parties) and take relevant actions.
• For Voice performance, check the user device configuration such as: Teams client, Wifi client, Wifi strength, Codec and headset. A large portion of user issues come from the users themselves.
• Check the performance of your proxy with an independent tool. Proxy providers always claim that their service is perfect which is often the case – but not always.
• Detect Microsoft outages early. If you do not, then you will be in a ‘war room’ for at least an hour from the beginning of an issue trying to troubleshoot it and the actual Microsoft announcement.

All of this and much more can be managed with Martello Vantage DX.

Synthetic transaction monitoring simulates real user behavior – including authentication, calls, meetings, emails, file upload/download, and the use of individual services. These transactions provide organizations with visibility into measured experiential metrics that can be used to identify performance issues and root cause of problems. Since the transactions occur within the very same paths that users themselves take, they offer a real-world view into what users are experiencing well before users have “had enough” and inform IT of an issue. Other forms of monitoring Microsoft 365 performance lack the contextual detail synthetic monitoring can offer, because they typically are relying on bigger picture monitoring metrics (such as the previously mentioned Microsoft 365 health status) that aren’t helpful with, say, attempting to isolate whether it’s your WiFi that is causing a performance issue.

Observability and optimization for the Microsoft Modern Workplace refers to a type of monitoring that focuses more on the outcome of a service (end user experience) rather than pure system metrics. With the growing adoption of SaaS services, observability and user experience monitoring have become critical because most of the server side has been moved to the service provider. When it comes to Office 365, the server side is provided directly by Microsoft in its Service Health portal. But this is not always helpful because you can’t always act on it. With a Modern Workplace solution, end-user experience monitoring is the first key to service performance because it enables IT to be proactively alerted of issues without users having to open an IT ticket. There are different ways to achieve this outcome, it can be through call records in the case of Microsoft Teams but also can be through synthetic transactions placed at strategic places to continuously measure the health of the service from your critical sites.